Basic child surgery concerns

16th December 2010

A report from the Royal College of Surgeons has found that many English district general hospitals can no longer provide basic surgery for children.

With complex surgery increasingly being done in specialist hospitals, leaving local hospitals to concentrate on more minor issues such as appendicitis, abscesses and hernias, the RCS report showed that more than half of the 305 hospitals in England no longer carried out basic emergency operations. The college said the shift to providing care in specialist centres meant that staff in district generals were not getting the training and experience they need.